Every mathematician has a story that goes something like this. You’re at a party, and someone asks what you do for a living. “I’m a mathematician,” you say. “You must be a genius!” they reply. Or ...

I. David Hilbert was 38 years old when he stepped up to address the Second International Congress of Mathematicians on the morning of Wednesday, August 8, 1900. The son of a judge in the East Prussian ...

You can probably think of a time when you’ve used math to solve an everyday problem, such as calculating a tip at a restaurant or determining the square footage of a room. But what role does math play ...

It’s a complaint many algebra teachers are familiar with, as more letters and symbols are introduced with progressively harder courses in mathematics. But why did the plus symbol emerge as the ...

In “The Great Math War,” Jason Socrates Bardi takes on a battle for the soul of numbers that divided the experts of its day. By Jordan Ellenberg Jordan Ellenberg, a professor of mathematics at the ...

In September 2019, news broke regarding progress on this 82-year-old question, thanks to prolific mathematician Terence Tao. And while the story of Tao's breakthrough is promising, the problem isn't ...

Over the past couple of months, several researchers have begun making the same provocative claim: They used generative-AI tools to solve a previously unanswered math problem. The most extreme promises ...

Imagine you are a mountaineer. Nothing excites you more than testing your skill, strength and resilience against some of the most extreme environments on the planet, and now you've decided to take on ...